"Neilsen is just a fossil at this point; their information gathering is second rate compared to what's publicly available now. "
Nielsen does more than TV and radio ratings. It has lots of supermarket data, and a host of other things that it can correlate with different sources, all of which is *not* publicly available information. You're the umptieme person I've met or heard of that claims Nielsen is outdated (or that they can start a company that will replace Nielsen), but your perception of what Nielsen does for its clients just barely scratches the surface.
"The bit I hate about hotmail is how they still sell addresses to spammers, year after year, and nobody calls them on it. Every few years I do a test, by creating an email address somewhere and letting it sit for a while. After a few weeks or months checking that it gets no spam, I send one email from a hotmail account to that email address. Within hours or days it's then receiving spam emails, and almost always the stock scam or mortgage type. "
That's hardly positive proof. When an email comes out of hotmail, it will go through intermediaries before reaching your test address. Any of these intermediaries (not just Microsoft) could be responsible for leaking your information (and notice, I used the word 'leaking', not 'selling'. Demonstrating a leak is one thing. Proving that Microsoft is purposely selling your information behind your back is another).
But, the lose of revenue is there for the author and the legitimate publisher. Someone is being harmed.
Yes, the potential for that loss of revenue is there, and yes, the potential for harm is there. However, it's a leap of logic to assume that any potential loss of revenue is an actual loss of revenue. And it's a leap of logic to assume that any potential harm becomes an actual harm.
It's a dangerous legal slippery slope to assume these things. Can you just imagine the loss of revenue Arfken is imposing on his fellow authors since he's basically regurgitating and recombining ideas that were for the most part already printed elsewhere. Can you just imagine the billions of dollars that have been lost because of Arfken? Really, the sky is the limit when one talks about one's unrealized potential income.
"Why would they stand for having that fantasy marred by the very aspects of real life..."
That's an excellent point.
Nothing says more than "real life" than Nissan cars or Reebok shoes. If the companies going into this fantasy world would have been BMW, Harley Davidson, or Victoria Secrets -- at least they would have had a fighting chance.
I'm sorry to say, the only fantasy that was entertained here was the fantasy of Nissan's and Reebok's clueless upper management. May be those guys should pay for their own Second Life subscriptions, and play during their own time -- wile they wait for their first unemployment check to come in through the mail.
Furthermore, if you write to television licensing and tell them your TV is used for gaming/DVDs only they will stop sending you letters; and if an inspector visits and you show them the TV connected to the games console, they will say "that's fine, you don't need a license". I have verified the two preceding facts by direct experience at two different houses within the last five years.
Hopefully, you didn't have a device that was capable of receiving radio waves either, otherwise they would have made you pay for their radio license at least (whether or not you listened to their BBC radio station).
"I didn't have Civics (American Government, or whatever you may have had instead) until Senior year in high school, and by then it was obvious that most of the students in my class didn't care. "
And why should they? I've been educated both in France and in the US, and in the United States I was taught fairy tale stories about American civics and American history. That's another problem with your civics education (assuming you received the same one I did), if all your past Presidents in your history books are heroes and saints, then what happens when you realize that your current leaders are not any of these things -- that must be really demoralizing.
"So a company in America says they're going to try mounting tasers on robots, and before the first prototype is even built, and long before the first police department decides to evaluate them, some guy on the other side of the Atlantic is worrying about who to sue, if the robots ever get used in his country? Besides, isn't the answer obvious? You sue the organization or individual who decided to deploy the robot. Whend did universities become repositories of dumb? "
Notice he said "take to the tribunal", not sue in civil court. In the UK, if you get killed because of the negligence of some company, your family can expect 20,000 pounds at best -- not millions in punitive damages. Suing just means something different over there.
Also few are the British citizens that haven't been yelled at by some faceless bureaucrat hidden behind a video camera and a remote-controlled high-powered blow horn/sound system. So in some ways, the British government has been ahead of the game technology-wise and control-wise, and the British citizens may already have had a small taste of what's to come for the rest of us.
Nice try, but that link didn't work for me (probably because of their cookie which is set to expire at the end of the session). Here is the article in question (which can be gotten for free from google news or from any other source which syndicates WSJ's content).
==========
Sprint Drops Clients Over Excessive Inquiries By SAMAR SRIVASTAVA July 7, 2007; Page A3
Sprint Nextel Corp. has taken the unusual step of disconnecting customers who call customer service excessively.
The country's third-largest wireless provider, with more than 53 million subscribers, has sent letters to about 1,000 subscribers terminating their contracts, according to Roni Singleton, a company spokeswoman.
"The number of inquiries you have made to us... has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs," the letter, dated June 29, states.
The terminated subscribers called an average of 25 times a month, a rate 40 times higher than average customers, Ms. Singleton said.
Sprint, which has been losing market share to the other carriers, has been trying to add more high-spending customers while keeping a lid on costs. The company also has been imposing stricter credit requirements on new customers.
Like other carriers, Sprint disconnects customers who fail to pay their bills. But this marks the first time the Reston, Va., company has cut off subscribers because they call customer service too much.
A spokesman for AT&T Inc., which operates the country's largest wireless network, says it doesn't take such actions. A spokesman for Verizon Wireless, the second largest and a venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, couldn't be reached.
Sprint has given its terminated customers until the end of July to find new carriers. They also won't have to pay early-termination fees, which are typically required when subscribers exit from their contracts early. "We understand that having to switch to another wireless carrier may be an inconvenience," the letter states.
Ms. Singleton said a large number of calls from these customers were related to billing issues. Some also requested information that Sprint isn't permitted to give out, such as details on other customers' accounts, she said.
"The amount of time being spent to resolve the same issues again and again was affecting our ability to service other customers," Ms. Singleton said. Ms. Singleton said Sprint has no plans to disconnect other customers, but she didn't rule out the possibility in the future.
Why only worry about "autonomous robots"? Even remote-controlled robots with stun guns would worry me. Anything that would make it easier for a cop to hurt someone without looking into the whites of their eyes would worry me.
Second, what is the point of an application searching my computer to see what copyrighted material I have on it?
If they found those files in your emule folder or in your bittorrent folder with a.torrent extension, then that might give them enough of a reason to send you a threatening letter. Of course, this wouldn't be absolute proof that you had downloaded these files yourself, or that those files are even illegal copies of the files they're thinking of, but not having absolute proof of an infringement hasn't stopped the RIAA from having taken action before -- and it probably won't stop them from taking action, threatening people, and asking for paiments again.
Disclaimer: I am an American, however, I was forced to take European history. Are people in Europe ever required to take American history?
Yes we do, we learn everything an American student learns, except for the fluff feel-good stories about American Presidents and their cherry trees. So with this abbreviated version of American history, what takes you guys years to study -- we can usually squeeze in under a week of study (which includes a full three hours of class time of course).
"Can I sue GM because the Suburban, as it is sold at retail, is not readily or easily converted into a rocket car? "
GM is a bad example. Toyota is now the largest automaker and growing -- while GM is still shrinking.
Besides, Microsoft is a government-enforced monopoly. It uses the violent force of the government to ensure it maintains its quasi-monopoly.
Imagine if the invention of the car had been patented and copyrighted as much as the one-click shopping button of today has been. Now imagine a paralel fictional world where patents and copyrights do not expire (or only expire after two hundred years -- unfortunately -- this is not a big stretch of the imagination as one might think).
Now if a car manufacturing monopoly spawned out of such an hypothetical World, do you think it would be allowed to continue enjoying its government-enforced monopoly without government interference and without making any concessions to the government in return?
This is a loaded question perhaps, but I hope you can see that without the protection of the government -- Microsoft is nothing -- so it better continue paying its protection money for the protection it receives.
"You have a point. There is indeed a hint of WTF in this story. "
Part of the problem is that the lines are being blurred between file explorer and internet explorer, and search and OS search. As terms and concepts we all took for granted when the agreements were written get redefined to mean something entirely different -- previous legal settlements that were based on those concepts may also get called into question and redefined as well.
Someone mod the parent down before too many slashdotters waste their money, the telezapper used to work -- but now it doesn't anymore. A few years back the automatic dialers relied on the standard telephone tones to know that a telephone had been disconnected, or busy, or whatever. The telezapper exploited that functionality by faking those tones whenever someone called. And the telezapper got so popular, that the makers of the automatic dialers stopped relying on those tones alone to know that a phone was disconnected, so now the telezapper is completely useless. Not only that, but the telezapper was also rarely used once purchased since *everyone* not just the telemarketers -- got to hear the annoying tone at the beginning of the call. Now, the people selling telezappers are just rip off artists, they know their products don't work -- so don't expect a refund.
No, the real solution is to get caller id from your phone company (assuming you live in a State or a Country that allows it) and buy one of those devices that white lists the phone numbers you want to receive, and otherwise allows your callers to punch in a special code in case they're not white listed yet. That special code, you could give it out only to your friends, or you could simply leave it on your outgoing message -- since even leaving it as an outgoing message will probably screen out a good portion of automated telemarketers. And notice, I said buy a device, don't rent, do not lease it from your phone company, those things are dead cheap, and the phone company is just going to make a nice profit on the monthly fee.
And someone said it already, but I just want to repeat it in case some of you missed it. If you have a cell phone, check your manual to see what kind of built-in functionality it already has. Even the basic cell phones these days have some pretty decent scheduling functionality, ring tones or vibrations for different numbers (or categories of numbers), and automated forwarding of certain phone calls directly into voice mail.
Many Native casinos could be put out of business by this thing, and it would be a shame if those communities lost most of their revenue and nothing made up for it.
You just can't replicate the experience of a real live casino with the experience of an online browser. American Casinos, even Native American casinos, are more than just about gambling. They're an experience that is difficult to replicate. Case in point, British casinos -- British casinos suck. British casinos, by law, can not be above a certain size, and are therefore much smaller than their American counterparts. They have the atmosphere of 7-eleven stores. No one goes to them. No one sits down in them. They just suck. And it's only after going to those types of casinos that one really appreciates the kind of work and energy that goes on into American casinos. The same can be said for Starbucks coffee shops for example, Starbuck shops sell the experience -- not the coffee.
I think that the existing Native American casinos will be just fine. As long as they keep their quasi-monopoly on off-line casinos, they'll be able to offer an experience for Americans that's unmatched in the online world.
"If everybody hates the song, they're still going to hate it no matter how many times it gets aired. "
Obviously, you're not as weak-willed as I am. I once bought a tape from "The New Kids on the Block". This is not something I'll admit to in public circles, but nevertheless -- it did happen.
Another time, when I was in France I bought a stupid CD made from a toddler singing complete nonsense, his proud parents owned most of the radio stations in France -- so you can bet their stupid little kid got constant around-the-clock will-make-your-ears-bleed kind of air play. And this is not like I was the only one doing this, the toddler's album was the number one best-selling album for many months.
Now I don't know where you live, or what kind of music you listen to, but I find it hard to believe that you've never been influenced in your music selections, or that you don't know anyone out of your friends or family members that haven't been influenced (or made temporarily insane) by constant air play repetition.
"I've been using Adobe products for years, and own several older versions of the products from their Creative Suite."
You've said it yourself, use older versions. Your marketing colleagues don't need the most recent versions. On ebay, you could probably pick up a few training videos and training manuals real cheap too, since the training stuff for old software loses its value as quickly -- if not quicker -- than the software it supports.
If the cost is still prohibitive, you could probably buy an old PC (or an old Mac), and have your coworkers share the station whenever they need to use the software. That's the thing with this kind of software, since it's not their primary job to do graphic design -- they may not all need to use the same graphic design software at the same time.
I realize you may just be looking for a place to complain, and perhaps my unsympathetic suggestions were not what you were looking for, but really -- look around some other businesses -- many businesses are still using Windows 98 -- and they're doing fine.
For a car alarm, you can get the car towed (at least, you can do that in the State/City I live in). If a car alarm goes off more than 15 minutes (it doesn't have to be contiguous), they'll cite the car and get it towed away (the interval used to be 30 minutes, but a couple of years ago they changed it to be 15 minutes). Nowadays, I can't even remember the last time I heard a car alarm, it just doesn't happen anymore -- I would know too -- because when it did happen -- I'd call the cops right away. Now the alarms are silent, they're wired to a pager that alerts the owner, and they're a great deterrent for car thiefs, since silent alarms only increase their chances of getting caught, and getting pounded on.
As to the sound from a dog, I believe there are local ordinances that dictate that sort of thing too. If a sound goes above some predetermined number of decibels during some predetermined period of time, the local authorities would take punitive action against such a dog owner, and if the problem was bad enough -- the victim could probably sue for damages. In most other cases however, the dog is probably not that loud, the local authorities may not be that eager to intervene, and a set of double-pane windows may just be enough to drown out such noises entirely.
In any case, we're not talking about private owners here, we're talking about Native American reservations -- we're talking about sovereign States. And I believe that since the United States and/or some of its citizens such as Rupert Murdoch have no problem drowning out Foreign countries in radio waves and television waves against the express wishes of those countries (e.g. Cuba, Iran, and many countries in South America), then I just don't see them respecting the wishes of the Native American nations either.
One interesting thing however is that those Native American Nations could try to interfere with those waves, since they can't really be stopped from interfering, and they could also forbid anyone on their soil from carrying a cell phone from a particular carrier. You combine this with the fact that they can still try to sue cell phone networks in American court, and possibly launch a Public Relations campaign against those cell phone networks -- then it may just be better for the cell phone networks to give in a little and negotiate some kind of deal with them.
"My father, a now retired British judge, pointed out to me years ago that sometimes a judge asks what appears to be a worryingly ignorant question, not because (s)he doesn't know the answer, but because (s)he suspects that some jury members don't know and will not want to appear stupid by asking. "
I'll do the same thing myself. I'll ask a seemingly stupid question when I sense a subtle shift in the listeners attention.
And I don't explain what I'm doing when doing this, so either I'm either really really smart, or I am really trying to make up for my mental deficiencies. Either way, some of you guys may want to consider both those possibilities the next time you hear someone asking a stupid question. There is usually a whole lot of context and subtext that can not be conveyed through snippets of quotes alone.
You should be the next President. You should be your own Sovereign State (this is not a new idea, a number of books have been written about this). You should stash enough money, skills, and enough social capital, to be able to move to another State -- or to another Country. You should have enough control over your life, that you can chose the kind of work and the kind of people that you allow to enter your life. You don't need to carry a gun, or dig yourself an underground bunker, and become a social outcast, usually -- having the freedom and the ability to relocate to another country, to another State, to another city, or to another neighborhood, is all you need to live the kind of life you really want.
On the topic of the media, you should be your own media, and you should stop whining about the things you can't really control. Sure, the media is awful, the media is trollish, the media is biased, etc. Now give it up already... There is enough technology within your reach that you have the ability to control the kind of information and images that end up reaching you. And sure, you won't be able to affect your neighbors -- by controlling the kind of media *they* watch, but that's ok -- if your neighbors are the types that don't listen to you -- chances are you won't be able to control the kinds of things they watch anyway.
Focus on the things you can control, and forget the rest. For instance get rid of your TV, or a less drastic option would be to get yourself a Tivo (or a Linux MythTV). It's a world of difference to be able to choose the kind of programs you watch, than to let the program directors and the schedule for the day make those decisions for you. Subscribe to the publications you actually want to read, instead of only reading the ones that appear in the newspaper dispensers in your area. And use the internet to find the kinds of the articles that you really want to read -- but can't get elsewhere. Again, I don't care what you do, just be proactive about it. You can set up your computer to automatically download podcasts. You can set your computer to automatically print out a couple articles every morning before you wake up. You can set up filters to email (or sms) you every time a politician votes on an issue you care about. And if you need your local news, you can usually find a quality blog or two that only blog about local issues in your area. In the end, you're in complete control of the kind of information that you allow to enter your mind.
And if all else fails, because no advice is perfect and no two situations identical, be prepared to move away -- we're not all destined to remain in the area/region we were born into -- just give yourself an escape valve.
I agree, thought replacing hardware and software that's over 30 years old sounds like a good idea. So, I hope it's not wasted money.
Re:Piracy is marker of immature market
on
Piracy Economics
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Yes an no. Piracy can really only apply to copyable objects. You can can steal a Civic but you can't "pirate" one."
Actually, according to your definition, you can. You can copy the Honda Civic's design, style, trimmings, parts, etc. That's probably not the easiest thing to do, but ease is not only factor here. There used to be a time when one could easily get executed for trying to translate the bible, or even trying to copy the bible. That used to be a sacrilege, and an act of an heretic, but we soon got over ourselves for that.
"I would suggest that piracy is associated with newer markets, not because the markets are immature, but because the newest markets are easily commoditized."
Commoditized? I would argue those products are anything but commodities. Usually, the more you distribute a commodity, the more depleted it gets and the less valuable it becomes. But when it comes to music for example, the opposite is true -- music doesn't even become valuable until it's been played and heard at least a thousand times.
Also, a commodity is something that's supposed to be easily interchangeable and indistinguishable from the other products within its own category, that's why it will lose so much value in a free market economy -- it's because it can easily be replaced. But for example -- once a song by Britney Spears gets embedded into the psyche of the consumer, nothing can take its place within the mind of that affected consumer -- it becomes a unique irreplaceable brand. That's why that consumer will go out and buy concert tickets, more music, and/or merchandise only from that particular Britney Spears brand (and none other).
I'd hardly call this a commodity. Would you?
And some the same principles are at work for the distribution of software too. Software, whether legally copied or illegally copied, becomes more unique and more valuable as more of it gets distributed and more of it gets used. That's why, the CEO of Macromedia actually used to encourage people to pirate his software (during the plush years of the dotcom bubble). And that is why, someone who's learned a particular Macromedia tool because of this effort on the behalf of Macromedia -- that person will not want to switch to anything but Macromedia -- once he gets his employer to purchase him software -- since in his mind nothing else can replace the Macromedia product he got to know so well.
So again, I'd hardly call this kind of product a commodity, on the contrary.
"In the US, when mobile phones were first implemented, one of two choices could be made: either mobiles could be given a distinctive prefix (area code) of their own, or they could be integrated into the local phone systems. "
You're forgetting option #3, allow people to chose for themselves, and allow for both schemes to be implemented. That's what the UK did actually, not all mobile phones in the UK have a special prefix and a surcharge when you call them. And here in the US, we already have area codes with surcharges on them for sex hot-lines and astrology hot-lines -- so it's not like this would have been a novel concept for us.
"Americans were Not Into the idea of paying to call someone locally."
Actually, I don't remember anyone having asked our opinions. This was a decision made by politicians, for the good of the people. Politicians like to do that, they like to take away our individual choices -- in order to protect us from ourselves. Personally, I would have loved to have access to both kinds of cell plans. I could have had one cheap cell phone number with a 900 area code, that I could given out to anybody, and that number I would have kept turned on all the time. And I could have had a second cell phone number, that wouldn't cost anything to call, that I'd give out only to the people I really wanted to talk to, but I'd have kept turned off when I went to sleep.
"With any major carrier, virtually all plans provide no-roaming service across the country."
And with minor low-cost cell carriers (like http://metropcs.com), assuming you're lucky enough to have them in your area, they give you (truly) unlimited phone calls (both in-network and outside of the network), unlimited web access, and unlimited texting -- for something like $64 a month (but you have third party roaming charges once you get out of their area).
"This is in large measure what makes the system so palatable to Americans"
Palatable? We were five to ten years behind our European counterparts in terms of cell phones becoming palatable for us American. Granted there are other factors that may have affected this late adoption, but whatever this may have cost us in terms of late adoption and loss of flexibility -- I don't think it was worth it.
1) What's with the "poisoning"? There is no speak of poisoning of testosterone, merely people with "low" vs. "high".
Being a man is a disease. That's the implied message I hear these days. Perhaps you're thinking I'm slightly exaggerating, or that I'm just trolling, but just take a look at this article for instance.
The principal author of this research found that men with higher levels of testosterones learn better when faced with angry faces. So the conclusion/title of her study, and the corresponding headline on slashdot should have been: "Construction Workers Learn Better when Faced with Stress" or "Construction Workers Not as Dumb as Previously Thought" -- it shouldn't have been "High-testosterone people reinforced by others' anger".
But instead, the story gets completely reframed, and the researcher herself makes the huge leap of logic that since "Better learning of a task associated with anger faces [it] indicates that the anger faces were rewarding"
What!?! What the F____?? How did she reach that conclusion? And yes, I did understand the thing about the rat learning better when it gets rewarded. The missing part of her remarks however is that there are plenty of other ways we can enhance our memory. For instance, the rat and the human being also learn a lot better when they're about to get killed. And whether it's fear, sorrow, happiness, or simply ecstasy, all those emotional states have been found to enhance our memory, and extend our senses, when compared to our more neutral emotional states. So this doesn't surprise me in the least, that she and her TA, found what they found. So it's not the findings themselves, that trouble me, it's the conclusions they draw from those findings that worry me.
Slashdot Mirror
"Neilsen is just a fossil at this point; their information gathering is second rate compared to what's publicly available now. "
Nielsen does more than TV and radio ratings. It has lots of supermarket data, and a host of other things that it can correlate with different sources, all of which is *not* publicly available information. You're the umptieme person I've met or heard of that claims Nielsen is outdated (or that they can start a company that will replace Nielsen), but your perception of what Nielsen does for its clients just barely scratches the surface.
"The bit I hate about hotmail is how they still sell addresses to spammers, year after year, and nobody calls them on it. Every few years I do a test, by creating an email address somewhere and letting it sit for a while. After a few weeks or months checking that it gets no spam, I send one email from a hotmail account to that email address. Within hours or days it's then receiving spam emails, and almost always the stock scam or mortgage type. "
That's hardly positive proof. When an email comes out of hotmail, it will go through intermediaries before reaching your test address. Any of these intermediaries (not just Microsoft) could be responsible for leaking your information (and notice, I used the word 'leaking', not 'selling'. Demonstrating a leak is one thing. Proving that Microsoft is purposely selling your information behind your back is another).
But, the lose of revenue is there for the author and the legitimate publisher. Someone is being harmed.
Yes, the potential for that loss of revenue is there, and yes, the potential for harm is there. However, it's a leap of logic to assume that any potential loss of revenue is an actual loss of revenue. And it's a leap of logic to assume that any potential harm becomes an actual harm.
It's a dangerous legal slippery slope to assume these things. Can you just imagine the loss of revenue Arfken is imposing on his fellow authors since he's basically regurgitating and recombining ideas that were for the most part already printed elsewhere. Can you just imagine the billions of dollars that have been lost because of Arfken? Really, the sky is the limit when one talks about one's unrealized potential income.
"Why would they stand for having that fantasy marred by the very aspects of real life..."
That's an excellent point. Nothing says more than "real life" than Nissan cars or Reebok shoes. If the companies going into this fantasy world would have been BMW, Harley Davidson, or Victoria Secrets -- at least they would have had a fighting chance.
I'm sorry to say, the only fantasy that was entertained here was the fantasy of Nissan's and Reebok's clueless upper management. May be those guys should pay for their own Second Life subscriptions, and play during their own time -- wile they wait for their first unemployment check to come in through the mail.
Furthermore, if you write to television licensing and tell them your TV is used for gaming/DVDs only they will stop sending you letters; and if an inspector visits and you show them the TV connected to the games console, they will say "that's fine, you don't need a license". I have verified the two preceding facts by direct experience at two different houses within the last five years.
Hopefully, you didn't have a device that was capable of receiving radio waves either, otherwise they would have made you pay for their radio license at least (whether or not you listened to their BBC radio station).
"I didn't have Civics (American Government, or whatever you may have had instead) until Senior year in high school, and by then it was obvious that most of the students in my class didn't care. "
And why should they? I've been educated both in France and in the US, and in the United States I was taught fairy tale stories about American civics and American history. That's another problem with your civics education (assuming you received the same one I did), if all your past Presidents in your history books are heroes and saints, then what happens when you realize that your current leaders are not any of these things -- that must be really demoralizing.
"So a company in America says they're going to try mounting tasers on robots, and before the first prototype is even built, and long before the first police department decides to evaluate them, some guy on the other side of the Atlantic is worrying about who to sue, if the robots ever get used in his country? Besides, isn't the answer obvious? You sue the organization or individual who decided to deploy the robot. Whend did universities become repositories of dumb? "
Notice he said "take to the tribunal", not sue in civil court. In the UK, if you get killed because of the negligence of some company, your family can expect 20,000 pounds at best -- not millions in punitive damages. Suing just means something different over there.
Also few are the British citizens that haven't been yelled at by some faceless bureaucrat hidden behind a video camera and a remote-controlled high-powered blow horn/sound system. So in some ways, the British government has been ahead of the game technology-wise and control-wise, and the British citizens may already have had a small taste of what's to come for the rest of us.
Nice try, but that link didn't work for me (probably because of their cookie which is set to expire at the end of the session). Here is the article in question (which can be gotten for free from google news or from any other source which syndicates WSJ's content).
... has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs," the letter, dated June 29, states.
==========
Sprint Drops Clients Over Excessive Inquiries
By SAMAR SRIVASTAVA
July 7, 2007; Page A3
Sprint Nextel Corp. has taken the unusual step of disconnecting customers who call customer service excessively.
The country's third-largest wireless provider, with more than 53 million subscribers, has sent letters to about 1,000 subscribers terminating their contracts, according to Roni Singleton, a company spokeswoman.
"The number of inquiries you have made to us
The terminated subscribers called an average of 25 times a month, a rate 40 times higher than average customers, Ms. Singleton said.
Sprint, which has been losing market share to the other carriers, has been trying to add more high-spending customers while keeping a lid on costs. The company also has been imposing stricter credit requirements on new customers.
Like other carriers, Sprint disconnects customers who fail to pay their bills. But this marks the first time the Reston, Va., company has cut off subscribers because they call customer service too much.
A spokesman for AT&T Inc., which operates the country's largest wireless network, says it doesn't take such actions. A spokesman for Verizon Wireless, the second largest and a venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, couldn't be reached.
Sprint has given its terminated customers until the end of July to find new carriers. They also won't have to pay early-termination fees, which are typically required when subscribers exit from their contracts early. "We understand that having to switch to another wireless carrier may be an inconvenience," the letter states.
Ms. Singleton said a large number of calls from these customers were related to billing issues. Some also requested information that Sprint isn't permitted to give out, such as details on other customers' accounts, she said.
"The amount of time being spent to resolve the same issues again and again was affecting our ability to service other customers," Ms. Singleton said. Ms. Singleton said Sprint has no plans to disconnect other customers, but she didn't rule out the possibility in the future.
Why only worry about "autonomous robots"? Even remote-controlled robots with stun guns would worry me. Anything that would make it easier for a cop to hurt someone without looking into the whites of their eyes would worry me.
Second, what is the point of an application searching my computer to see what copyrighted material I have on it?
.torrent extension, then that might give them enough of a reason to send you a threatening letter. Of course, this wouldn't be absolute proof that you had downloaded these files yourself, or that those files are even illegal copies of the files they're thinking of, but not having absolute proof of an infringement hasn't stopped the RIAA from having taken action before -- and it probably won't stop them from taking action, threatening people, and asking for paiments again.
If they found those files in your emule folder or in your bittorrent folder with a
Disclaimer: I am an American, however, I was forced to take European history. Are people in Europe ever required to take American history?
Yes we do, we learn everything an American student learns, except for the fluff feel-good stories about American Presidents and their cherry trees. So with this abbreviated version of American history, what takes you guys years to study -- we can usually squeeze in under a week of study (which includes a full three hours of class time of course).
"Can I sue GM because the Suburban, as it is sold at retail, is not readily or easily converted into a rocket car? "
GM is a bad example. Toyota is now the largest automaker and growing -- while GM is still shrinking.
Besides, Microsoft is a government-enforced monopoly. It uses the violent force of the government to ensure it maintains its quasi-monopoly. Imagine if the invention of the car had been patented and copyrighted as much as the one-click shopping button of today has been. Now imagine a paralel fictional world where patents and copyrights do not expire (or only expire after two hundred years -- unfortunately -- this is not a big stretch of the imagination as one might think). Now if a car manufacturing monopoly spawned out of such an hypothetical World, do you think it would be allowed to continue enjoying its government-enforced monopoly without government interference and without making any concessions to the government in return?
This is a loaded question perhaps, but I hope you can see that without the protection of the government -- Microsoft is nothing -- so it better continue paying its protection money for the protection it receives.
"You have a point. There is indeed a hint of WTF in this story. "
Part of the problem is that the lines are being blurred between file explorer and internet explorer, and search and OS search. As terms and concepts we all took for granted when the agreements were written get redefined to mean something entirely different -- previous legal settlements that were based on those concepts may also get called into question and redefined as well.
Someone mod the parent down before too many slashdotters waste their money, the telezapper used to work -- but now it doesn't anymore. A few years back the automatic dialers relied on the standard telephone tones to know that a telephone had been disconnected, or busy, or whatever. The telezapper exploited that functionality by faking those tones whenever someone called. And the telezapper got so popular, that the makers of the automatic dialers stopped relying on those tones alone to know that a phone was disconnected, so now the telezapper is completely useless. Not only that, but the telezapper was also rarely used once purchased since *everyone* not just the telemarketers -- got to hear the annoying tone at the beginning of the call. Now, the people selling telezappers are just rip off artists, they know their products don't work -- so don't expect a refund.
No, the real solution is to get caller id from your phone company (assuming you live in a State or a Country that allows it) and buy one of those devices that white lists the phone numbers you want to receive, and otherwise allows your callers to punch in a special code in case they're not white listed yet. That special code, you could give it out only to your friends, or you could simply leave it on your outgoing message -- since even leaving it as an outgoing message will probably screen out a good portion of automated telemarketers. And notice, I said buy a device, don't rent, do not lease it from your phone company, those things are dead cheap, and the phone company is just going to make a nice profit on the monthly fee.
And someone said it already, but I just want to repeat it in case some of you missed it. If you have a cell phone, check your manual to see what kind of built-in functionality it already has. Even the basic cell phones these days have some pretty decent scheduling functionality, ring tones or vibrations for different numbers (or categories of numbers), and automated forwarding of certain phone calls directly into voice mail.
"Even the CEO, who spends every waking moment with her laptop... "
Yeah, females with executive-level salaries that buy Macs on price alone.
Very convincing...
Many Native casinos could be put out of business by this thing, and it would be a shame if those communities lost most of their revenue and nothing made up for it.
You just can't replicate the experience of a real live casino with the experience of an online browser. American Casinos, even Native American casinos, are more than just about gambling. They're an experience that is difficult to replicate. Case in point, British casinos -- British casinos suck. British casinos, by law, can not be above a certain size, and are therefore much smaller than their American counterparts. They have the atmosphere of 7-eleven stores. No one goes to them. No one sits down in them. They just suck. And it's only after going to those types of casinos that one really appreciates the kind of work and energy that goes on into American casinos. The same can be said for Starbucks coffee shops for example, Starbuck shops sell the experience -- not the coffee.
I think that the existing Native American casinos will be just fine. As long as they keep their quasi-monopoly on off-line casinos, they'll be able to offer an experience for Americans that's unmatched in the online world.
"If everybody hates the song, they're still going to hate it no matter how many times it gets aired. "
Obviously, you're not as weak-willed as I am. I once bought a tape from "The New Kids on the Block". This is not something I'll admit to in public circles, but nevertheless -- it did happen.
Another time, when I was in France I bought a stupid CD made from a toddler singing complete nonsense, his proud parents owned most of the radio stations in France -- so you can bet their stupid little kid got constant around-the-clock will-make-your-ears-bleed kind of air play. And this is not like I was the only one doing this, the toddler's album was the number one best-selling album for many months.
Now I don't know where you live, or what kind of music you listen to, but I find it hard to believe that you've never been influenced in your music selections, or that you don't know anyone out of your friends or family members that haven't been influenced (or made temporarily insane) by constant air play repetition.
"I've been using Adobe products for years, and own several older versions of the products from their Creative Suite."
You've said it yourself, use older versions. Your marketing colleagues don't need the most recent versions. On ebay, you could probably pick up a few training videos and training manuals real cheap too, since the training stuff for old software loses its value as quickly -- if not quicker -- than the software it supports.
If the cost is still prohibitive, you could probably buy an old PC (or an old Mac), and have your coworkers share the station whenever they need to use the software. That's the thing with this kind of software, since it's not their primary job to do graphic design -- they may not all need to use the same graphic design software at the same time.
I realize you may just be looking for a place to complain, and perhaps my unsympathetic suggestions were not what you were looking for, but really -- look around some other businesses -- many businesses are still using Windows 98 -- and they're doing fine.
For a car alarm, you can get the car towed (at least, you can do that in the State/City I live in). If a car alarm goes off more than 15 minutes (it doesn't have to be contiguous), they'll cite the car and get it towed away (the interval used to be 30 minutes, but a couple of years ago they changed it to be 15 minutes). Nowadays, I can't even remember the last time I heard a car alarm, it just doesn't happen anymore -- I would know too -- because when it did happen -- I'd call the cops right away. Now the alarms are silent, they're wired to a pager that alerts the owner, and they're a great deterrent for car thiefs, since silent alarms only increase their chances of getting caught, and getting pounded on.
As to the sound from a dog, I believe there are local ordinances that dictate that sort of thing too. If a sound goes above some predetermined number of decibels during some predetermined period of time, the local authorities would take punitive action against such a dog owner, and if the problem was bad enough -- the victim could probably sue for damages. In most other cases however, the dog is probably not that loud, the local authorities may not be that eager to intervene, and a set of double-pane windows may just be enough to drown out such noises entirely.
In any case, we're not talking about private owners here, we're talking about Native American reservations -- we're talking about sovereign States. And I believe that since the United States and/or some of its citizens such as Rupert Murdoch have no problem drowning out Foreign countries in radio waves and television waves against the express wishes of those countries (e.g. Cuba, Iran, and many countries in South America), then I just don't see them respecting the wishes of the Native American nations either.
One interesting thing however is that those Native American Nations could try to interfere with those waves, since they can't really be stopped from interfering, and they could also forbid anyone on their soil from carrying a cell phone from a particular carrier. You combine this with the fact that they can still try to sue cell phone networks in American court, and possibly launch a Public Relations campaign against those cell phone networks -- then it may just be better for the cell phone networks to give in a little and negotiate some kind of deal with them.
"My father, a now retired British judge, pointed out to me years ago that sometimes a judge asks what appears to be a worryingly ignorant question, not because (s)he doesn't know the answer, but because (s)he suspects that some jury members don't know and will not want to appear stupid by asking. "
I'll do the same thing myself. I'll ask a seemingly stupid question when I sense a subtle shift in the listeners attention. And I don't explain what I'm doing when doing this, so either I'm either really really smart, or I am really trying to make up for my mental deficiencies. Either way, some of you guys may want to consider both those possibilities the next time you hear someone asking a stupid question. There is usually a whole lot of context and subtext that can not be conveyed through snippets of quotes alone.
You should be the next President. You should be your own Sovereign State (this is not a new idea, a number of books have been written about this). You should stash enough money, skills, and enough social capital, to be able to move to another State -- or to another Country. You should have enough control over your life, that you can chose the kind of work and the kind of people that you allow to enter your life. You don't need to carry a gun, or dig yourself an underground bunker, and become a social outcast, usually -- having the freedom and the ability to relocate to another country, to another State, to another city, or to another neighborhood, is all you need to live the kind of life you really want.
On the topic of the media, you should be your own media, and you should stop whining about the things you can't really control. Sure, the media is awful, the media is trollish, the media is biased, etc. Now give it up already... There is enough technology within your reach that you have the ability to control the kind of information and images that end up reaching you. And sure, you won't be able to affect your neighbors -- by controlling the kind of media *they* watch, but that's ok -- if your neighbors are the types that don't listen to you -- chances are you won't be able to control the kinds of things they watch anyway.
Focus on the things you can control, and forget the rest. For instance get rid of your TV, or a less drastic option would be to get yourself a Tivo (or a Linux MythTV). It's a world of difference to be able to choose the kind of programs you watch, than to let the program directors and the schedule for the day make those decisions for you. Subscribe to the publications you actually want to read, instead of only reading the ones that appear in the newspaper dispensers in your area. And use the internet to find the kinds of the articles that you really want to read -- but can't get elsewhere. Again, I don't care what you do, just be proactive about it. You can set up your computer to automatically download podcasts. You can set your computer to automatically print out a couple articles every morning before you wake up. You can set up filters to email (or sms) you every time a politician votes on an issue you care about. And if you need your local news, you can usually find a quality blog or two that only blog about local issues in your area. In the end, you're in complete control of the kind of information that you allow to enter your mind.
And if all else fails, because no advice is perfect and no two situations identical, be prepared to move away -- we're not all destined to remain in the area/region we were born into -- just give yourself an escape valve.
I hope you don't expect miracles from 2.1 billion software budget. http://www.fcw.com/article81246
I agree, thought replacing hardware and software that's over 30 years old sounds like a good idea. So, I hope it's not wasted money.
"Yes an no. Piracy can really only apply to copyable objects. You can can steal a Civic but you can't "pirate" one."
Actually, according to your definition, you can. You can copy the Honda Civic's design, style, trimmings, parts, etc. That's probably not the easiest thing to do, but ease is not only factor here. There used to be a time when one could easily get executed for trying to translate the bible, or even trying to copy the bible. That used to be a sacrilege, and an act of an heretic, but we soon got over ourselves for that.
"I would suggest that piracy is associated with newer markets, not because the markets are immature, but because the newest markets are easily commoditized."
Commoditized? I would argue those products are anything but commodities. Usually, the more you distribute a commodity, the more depleted it gets and the less valuable it becomes. But when it comes to music for example, the opposite is true -- music doesn't even become valuable until it's been played and heard at least a thousand times.
Also, a commodity is something that's supposed to be easily interchangeable and indistinguishable from the other products within its own category, that's why it will lose so much value in a free market economy -- it's because it can easily be replaced. But for example -- once a song by Britney Spears gets embedded into the psyche of the consumer, nothing can take its place within the mind of that affected consumer -- it becomes a unique irreplaceable brand. That's why that consumer will go out and buy concert tickets, more music, and/or merchandise only from that particular Britney Spears brand (and none other).
I'd hardly call this a commodity. Would you?
And some the same principles are at work for the distribution of software too. Software, whether legally copied or illegally copied, becomes more unique and more valuable as more of it gets distributed and more of it gets used. That's why, the CEO of Macromedia actually used to encourage people to pirate his software (during the plush years of the dotcom bubble). And that is why, someone who's learned a particular Macromedia tool because of this effort on the behalf of Macromedia -- that person will not want to switch to anything but Macromedia -- once he gets his employer to purchase him software -- since in his mind nothing else can replace the Macromedia product he got to know so well.
So again, I'd hardly call this kind of product a commodity, on the contrary.
"In the US, when mobile phones were first implemented, one of two choices could be made: either mobiles could be given a distinctive prefix (area code) of their own, or they could be integrated into the local phone systems. "
You're forgetting option #3, allow people to chose for themselves, and allow for both schemes to be implemented. That's what the UK did actually, not all mobile phones in the UK have a special prefix and a surcharge when you call them. And here in the US, we already have area codes with surcharges on them for sex hot-lines and astrology hot-lines -- so it's not like this would have been a novel concept for us.
"Americans were Not Into the idea of paying to call someone locally."
Actually, I don't remember anyone having asked our opinions. This was a decision made by politicians, for the good of the people. Politicians like to do that, they like to take away our individual choices -- in order to protect us from ourselves. Personally, I would have loved to have access to both kinds of cell plans. I could have had one cheap cell phone number with a 900 area code, that I could given out to anybody, and that number I would have kept turned on all the time. And I could have had a second cell phone number, that wouldn't cost anything to call, that I'd give out only to the people I really wanted to talk to, but I'd have kept turned off when I went to sleep.
"With any major carrier, virtually all plans provide no-roaming service across the country."
And with minor low-cost cell carriers (like http://metropcs.com), assuming you're lucky enough to have them in your area, they give you (truly) unlimited phone calls (both in-network and outside of the network), unlimited web access, and unlimited texting -- for something like $64 a month (but you have third party roaming charges once you get out of their area).
"This is in large measure what makes the system so palatable to Americans"
Palatable? We were five to ten years behind our European counterparts in terms of cell phones becoming palatable for us American. Granted there are other factors that may have affected this late adoption, but whatever this may have cost us in terms of late adoption and loss of flexibility -- I don't think it was worth it.
1) What's with the "poisoning"? There is no speak of poisoning of testosterone, merely people with "low" vs. "high".
Being a man is a disease. That's the implied message I hear these days. Perhaps you're thinking I'm slightly exaggerating, or that I'm just trolling, but just take a look at this article for instance. The principal author of this research found that men with higher levels of testosterones learn better when faced with angry faces. So the conclusion/title of her study, and the corresponding headline on slashdot should have been: "Construction Workers Learn Better when Faced with Stress" or "Construction Workers Not as Dumb as Previously Thought" -- it shouldn't have been "High-testosterone people reinforced by others' anger".
But instead, the story gets completely reframed, and the researcher herself makes the huge leap of logic that since "Better learning of a task associated with anger faces [it] indicates that the anger faces were rewarding"
What!?! What the F____?? How did she reach that conclusion? And yes, I did understand the thing about the rat learning better when it gets rewarded. The missing part of her remarks however is that there are plenty of other ways we can enhance our memory. For instance, the rat and the human being also learn a lot better when they're about to get killed. And whether it's fear, sorrow, happiness, or simply ecstasy, all those emotional states have been found to enhance our memory, and extend our senses, when compared to our more neutral emotional states. So this doesn't surprise me in the least, that she and her TA, found what they found. So it's not the findings themselves, that trouble me, it's the conclusions they draw from those findings that worry me.